


Six Months on Earth

by CaffieneKitty



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Background Slash, Children of Earth Compliant, Established Relationship, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Missing Scene, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-20
Updated: 2009-08-20
Packaged: 2017-12-29 04:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1000879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaffieneKitty/pseuds/CaffieneKitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain John Harkness spent six months on Earth before leaving.</p><p>A bit character study, a bit 'meta-as-fic', a bit introspection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Six Months on Earth

**Author's Note:**

> _Originally posted on Livejournal August 20, 2009_

Wales was out. Ianto was Wales. Wales was Ianto. Then England, the whole of the UK, Europe. Anywhere where people drank, made, or grew coffee. That left out nearly everywhere else on the planet.

It wasn't that places reminded him of Ianto, it was that he didn't want to be in those places without Ianto. He didn't want to _be_ without Ianto. But not being was not an option open to Jack Harkness.

He couldn't even think of his grandson, Steven. At the same time, he couldn't not think of him.

Everywhere he went, every child he saw, there was an unstoppable pang of curiosity; had this child been one of the ten percent? This boy, throwing rocks at an ibis standing in the Nile; this girl, shrieking and drumming her feet against the floor in an American supermarket. Had this child's life been bought with his grandson's unknowing sacrifice?

It seemed, sometimes, that it was the unknowing part that burned most. Jack wished he could have explained, let his grandson know that he would save everyone on the whole Earth by dying. Maybe it was better Steven hadn't known, hadn't been aware. Hadn't been screaming 'No' and 'Don't' and 'I don't want to die, Uncle Jack'. Just stood there, trusting and confused as Jack sent the signal that killed Steven and saved the Earth. Every child Jack saw brought doubt and regret and pain.

If Ianto was here, Jack could have allowed himself to think about Steven. Could have regretted, could have grieved, could have railed against himself, repented. Ianto would have let him. Ianto would have made Jack touch the memories that burned, and helped cool the scars they left behind.

It had been a very long time since Jack had let himself get so attached. Immortality had many prices; finding love and watching half your soul die just when you'd found it was worst.

Ianto had said that Jack would watch him die, but as an old man, just hours before. Jack had felt the waiting distant sadness, but he'd wanted it. He wanted to be with Ianto the whole long years, watching age creep over him, wrinkles spidering across his face in time-lapse. Caring for Ianto, being there. Being together until...

It had been a long time since Jack had made himself that vulnerable. He'd refused it, denying the word 'couple' as something he could be a part of. He regretted denying that now. He was made of regrets under his stringently maintained surface. An immortality of regret.

The whole of planet Earth made him burn. He couldn't re-assemble his shell of being nothing; some soulless revenant thing, nothing more than surface appearance. A smirk and a trenchcoat, no regrets. Ianto had scratched the surface of Jack's shell. No one else in centuries had, and now Jack was bleeding his regrets everywhere he went on the planet.

He couldn't stay. He couldn't escape on Earth. He couldn't escape himself. There was no refuge deep enough or distant enough to escape what he'd done and what he'd lost. Not this time.

After six months of running from himself, he left, watching Gwen's tearful face dissolve in a haze of light, feeling something like a bomb exploding inside of him again.

\- - -  
(that's it. nothing special.)


End file.
